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Facebook F8 conference set for July 23

Facebook understands what makes its service tick: lots of users and developers.

On July 23, the social-networking powerhouse will hold its second annual F8 platform conference in San Francisco. The company claims 400,000 developers in more than 160 countries and 24,000 Facebook applications in its directory.

Facebook also recently reached a milestone, according to ComScore, catching up with MySpace on the unique-user metric.

Both social networks attract about 115 million members on a monthly basis. However, most of Facebook's growth has come from outside the United States, which could be more difficult to monetize than U.S. … Read more

GSP East: How to battle the Facebook zombie army

ARLINGTON, Va.--A quartet of Facebook's platform engineers took the stage on Wednesday morning at the Graphing Social Patterns: East conference, for a discussion led by conference organizer Dave McClure about what's next for the social network's developer initiative. Speaking to the developer-heavy audience at the small conference were senior platform manager Dave Morin, program manager Josh Elman, product manager Ruchi Sanghvi, and director of platform product marketing Benjamin Ling.

Morin said that the social network has hit the milestone of 80 million active users worldwide.

As is typically the case with conference panels featuring Facebook employees, … Read more

This ain't Jive talkin', it's social networking for grands

The Jive was created by Ben Arent, a college student, over a six-month period as part of his product design degree. The concept was designed to get elderly technophobes connected to their friends and family without feeling overwhelmed of learning how to use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. It would essentially be their own type of social networking.

The unit itself is referred to as "Betty"--a steel-cased monitor with three magnetic sensors, to help recognize the events in the program, making it a tangible interface. The internal hardware is a stripped-down Dell Latitude … Read more

Facebook photos make their way to the shelf

It's been noted many times that digital photo frames--among the most overproduced items in the gadget world--are perennially searching for new ways to differentiate themselves from the ever-growing pack. Some have included Webcams, combined with land lines to provide photo IDs, or have doubled as secondary computer displays.

eStarling, for its part, has taken a different tack: Rather than contantly updating its hardware, it adds new feeds to its 8-inch Wi-Fi frame. Already able to get streams from online photo services such as Flickr or Photobucket, the wireless frame has now added Facebook to its networked family.

Once hooked … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 740: iTunes bombing

How to get to the top of the iTunes podcast list--we think. We'll let you know Monday. Also, breaking news! Amazon goes down midshow! Was it something we said? In other news, we attempt to solve issues of global hypercapitalism, the growth imperative, and their inevitable consumer-unfriendly consequences. Plus, we find out why you have to go through voicemail hell when you call customer support, and the answer makes us lose our ever-loving minds. Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 740

ISP secretly added spy code To Web sessions, crashing browsers http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/isp-spying-made.html … Read more

How much do you hate that ad? Facebook wants to know

This post was updated at 5:34 AM on Friday with comment from Facebook.

Finally, I can now do something about all those tacky speed-dating ads that show up on my Facebook profile. Blogger Rob Webb appears to have been the first to notice that the social network now allows members to rate the site's ads with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, you know, gladiator-style.

Facebook originally launched its "social ads" strategy last November, and privacy concerns over the controversial "Beacon" ads gave the program some pretty bad press. But this move is pretty innovative, and … Read more

ConnectU: We're not through with Zuckerberg

Scandal fans, rejoice--the crimson-hued nastiness between ConnectU and Facebook ain't over yet!

Court documents filed on Wednesday reveal that the founders of ConnectU, who claim that Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg pilfered their business plan and code, are touting new "smoking-gun" evidence against the 24-year-old billionaire.

Facebook settled ConnectU v. Facebook in April, but ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra say a search for related documents has produced some results.

Forensic expert Jeff Parmet was commissioned by ConnectU to trawl through Facebook hard drives after a court order opened them up for discovery in … Read more

Facebook adopts the CPAL poison pill

I suppose it was too much to expect Facebook to adopt a permissive open-source license for its application platform. It's too bad, as it had the chance to forestall growth from Ning, Ringside, and other social networking upstarts by making competition impractical.

Instead, by choosing CPAL, Facebook has ensured that it can be open source without anyone actually using its source. Was that the intent?

As OStatic explains, CPAL requires display of an attribution notice on derivative works. This practice, which effectively requires downstream code to carry the original developer(s)' logo, came to be known as "badgeware." It was approved by the OSI but continues to be viewed with suspicion within the open-source community.

I've written before about how most open-source licenses don't apply themselves well to the networked economy. Only the OSL, AGPL, and CPAL contemplate web-based services. It's not surprising that Facebook opted for one of these licenses, but I am surprised it chose the one least likely to lead to developers actually modifying the Facebook platform.

If the point was to protect the Facebook platform from competition (i.e., derivative works), Facebook chose a good license. If it was to encourage development, it chose the wrong license.… Read more

When Clinton called Zuckerberg

As she lurched towards an unfortunate demise in the Democratic Primary election, Hillary Clinton sought out Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and appeared to blame him for her failure to defeat Barack Obama.

Last week, a Clinton campaign operative placed a phone call to Zuckerberg, choosing a less than optimal time of the morning. When Zuckerberg picked up, the New York Senator came on the line to firmly state her views.

"Mr. Zuckerberg. You and your friendsters- I believe that's the trendy term- are costing me the Presidency," declared the Senator.

"Um, we're Facebook, not Friendster, … Read more